At the squires' and lords' tables Antonio was a success. He rarely spoke until he was addressed: but such remarks as he made were all sensible and interesting, and his foreign accent made them piquant to hear. At every meal the talk turned sooner or later to the townsmen's agitation for abolishing the Corn Laws and for fostering industrialism at all costs until England became the workshop of the world. In his rôle of the Intelligent Foreigner Antonio was generally asked his opinion. He would reply that no nation could be enduringly healthy and wealthy unless the majority of her children nourished themselves directly from Mother Earth; and although this way of putting it rather bewildered his hosts, Antonio's practical conclusion in favor of agriculture was always applauded. Too often for the monk's ease the table-talk turned to religion. The English notables took it for granted that, as an Intelligent Foreigner, Antonio must be a French skeptic. They hated atheism less than Popery; and although most of them were church-going men, they would have preferred that Antonio should believe nothing at all to his believing in the Christian religion plus the Pope. On such occasions Antonio always strained his wits to turn the subject: but whenever his host or a fellow-guest had the bad taste to be persistent he would reply with spirit that Rome was no more intolerant to Protestantism than Canterbury was to Dissent; that perfunctory and greedy priests were no more common than perfunctory and greedy parsons; and that the essential truths of revealed religion were far more widely and firmly believed in Portugal than in England. Once or twice a fellow-diner, who had heard of the suppression of the monasteries, would launch a jest or a sneer against monks: whereupon Antonio would boldly answer: "They were good men. I made wine for years in an abbey vineyard, and I ought to know." Once, strangely enough, Antonio and Mr. Crowberry ate a lugubrious luncheon in the house of a poor and proud Catholic family who had kept the faith, with occasional lapses, through the three centuries of persecution. But intermarriage and isolation had done them no good. When Mr. Crowberry introduced his lieutenant as a fellow-believer they responded uneasily. They seemed to be without a trace of the missionary spirit, and to look with alarm upon the incipient revival of Catholicism lest the mob should shout out for new penal laws. An extremely aged French priest, a refugee from the Terror, was their chaplain; and all they wished was to be left alone in a tiny Popish enclave among the surrounding Protestantism.